PROCEEDINGS OF THE 21ST ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2018
San Diego, California
Conceptualizing Students’ Struggle with Familiar Concepts in a New Mathematical Domain
Page: 1137
This article is concerned with cognitive aspects of students’ struggles in situations in which familiar concepts are reconsidered in a new mathematical domain. Examples of such cross-curricular concepts are divisibility in the domain of integers and in the domain of polynomials, multiplication in the domain of numbers and in the domain of vectors. The article introduces a polysemous approach for structuring students’ concept images in these situations. Post-exchanges from an online forum were analyzed for illustrating the potential of the approach for indicating possible sources of students’ misconceptions and meta-ways of thinking that might make students aware of their mistakes.